


Natsukashii

by TheCinematicRevealThatBatmanIsDead



Category: Kagerou Project
Genre: Animal Death, Dissociation, Families of Choice, Gen, Gorgons are snake people, Harm to Animals, Healing, Panic Attacks, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Reunions, Team as Family, molting, so they molt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-11-09
Packaged: 2019-01-19 22:16:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12419382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCinematicRevealThatBatmanIsDead/pseuds/TheCinematicRevealThatBatmanIsDead
Summary: Saudade (souˈdädə)nouna bittersweet nostalgia for something you have lost and will never have again; a profound lack of something you can't quite name, one that is so cold and painful that you cannot help but curl around it and press it against your heart.懐かしい (Natsukashii)adjectivesomething cherished, or in its absence, longed for.





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

_ “Youth turns out to be far less exciting and far more unstable than we expect. _

_ When we realize the weight of our lives, the weakness within ourselves, we feel small and suffer. I hope the young people, including myself, get to make the time on our hands its most interesting and meaningful, and stop obsessing over how hurt we have been in the past, how different we are from others at the moment, and how successful we push ourselves to become in the future.” -  _ OOHYO  


* * *

 

The cafe at the top of the hill was called Kokorazòn, and it was pretty crowded for a Monday afternoon. Its wood frame and pastel green color scheme made it stand out against the sleek metal of the surrounding buildings. Outside, there was a veranda with metal tables, wicker chairs and big green umbrellas for shade. The tables were mostly occupied by couples or groups of friends that squinted in the blinding sunlight as they sipped blackberry milkshakes and chatted. The air was filled with their muted conversation and clinking glasses, sounds that were drowned out by the crackling of the heat in the air. It was ninety-eight degrees Fahrenheit and the city was still teeming with people. Hibiya Amamiya hadn’t expected this. He had wanted to just wander the streets alone, sit outside with a plate of rice and empanadas, and enjoy the silence. That was the self-care thing that Momo was always badgering him about, only less absurd, something he could actually envision himself doing, unlike meditating or getting a pet. He was stepping outside, letting go of some of his responsibility and getting something to eat. That counted, right? It had to. 

Behind him, the bus made a hissing sound as the doors sealed shut, and he seized up for just a second. No one seemed to notice, but his blood ran cold anyway. He clenched his fists, bracing for a panic attack that did not come. With a rumble, the bus crawled down the road and around a corner, leaving Hibiya standing in front of the cafe, unsure of what exactly to do next. There was a sign that read in Japanese, “Please take a seat, and we will bring you a menu shortly.” Then below that, in transliterated Spanish, “ _ Muchas Gracias y Bienvenidos a Kokorazòn.”  _

He walked through the gate and picked out a table on the veranda, right next to the metal railing that separated the cafe from the sidewalk, and looked out at the street. This was a newer district of the city. He could tell by the chalky white texture of the pavement and the sharp-edged buildings made of glass and stainless steel. Everything reflected everything else, and he could imagine a particularly hot summer turning this entire block into a puddle of molten steel and tar. 

He sighed.

Sometimes he felt like a piece of him had been burned away in the Kagerou Daze. 

He didn’t know what it was, but he missed it. 

 

Something appeared in the corner of his vision and he heard a voice. “Hi, my name is Kido and I’ll be taking care of you this afternoon.”

Hibiya started at the name. It couldn’t be. It  _ couldn’t... _ he looked up at the woman standing over his table. She was wearing a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a black vest with  _ Kokorazòn _ sewn on in shiny red stitching. Her hair was shorter and her trademark hoodie was nowhere to be found, but her ghostly presence and intense, dark brown eyes were unmistakable.

“Hibiya?”

“Commander?”

“I didn’t know you were back in town!”

It had been three years since he last saw the commander of the Mekakushi Dan. They had all kept in touch over text and the occasional phone call, but no one ever talked in much detail about their lives after that summer. They agreed to save that for when they all met again in person, something that was difficult to organize between Momo’s concerts and TV appearances, Seto’s workload, Haruka’s lack of mobility and Kano’s occasional disappearance. Kido pulled up a chair and sat across from Hibiya; whatever her job had been, it was irrelevant now. “Tell me everything.”

“Yeah,” said Hibiya sheepishly. He didn’t tell her everything. He didn’t talk about the flood or his recent trouble with Hiyori. The latter she knew about; the former would just make her worried. Instead he spoke vaguely about how his parents started homeschooling him after what happened, and how he’d had a big fight with them about wanting to go to a real high school, and how when one of his father’s former students won a national Judo competition and brought in more clients than their little dojo could handle, they finally gave in. All the while, Kido sat listening intently, her eyes glowing red, giving them the privacy they both preferred. 

“... and now Dad’s opening up a dojo in town, so...I guess I live here now.”

Kido never really wore her heart on her sleeve, but this was big. The joy on her face was obvious. “That’s awesome, Hibiya! Have you told anyone else yet?”

He shook his head. 

“Not even Hiyori?”

He went cold, his expression darkened, and Kido instantly saw that she had tripped a wire. 

“Oh...sorry, I forgot that you two...sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he said, eyes fixed on the tablecloth. 

She nodded, and they sat in silence for a time.

“Well, listen,” said Kido, “I’m kinda on the clock right now but if you want to meet up later, I can give you my number and we’ll figure something out. What’s today?”

“Monday.”

“No, the date.”

“Oh. The...tenth?”

Kido checked her phone. “Hm...Yep, you nailed it. Are you free Saturday?”

“Always.”

“Cool. You won’t believe this but the rest of the gang’s in town this week, so we might finally do something for the anniversary. Text this number if you’re up for it and I’ll give you the details.” 

As she wrote down her contact info on a napkin in her neat, compressed handwriting, Hibiya smiled to himself. Same old Kido. Always at full throttle. Cool, mature, in control. When he first met her, he had chalked this up to her being older than him. Now he was almost the same age she was then, and he wasn’t any closer to being able to bear the load she had borne throughout that fateful summer. When she handed him the scrap of paper, he folded it up and placed it in his shirt pocket. 

“Good to see you again, Commander.”

“Same here. Don’t be a stranger.”

They both extended an index finger and made a  _ shush _ gesture over their left eye instead of their lips, a signal that had become something like a secret handshake among the Mekakushi Dan. Even though he hadn’t done it in years, it felt as natural to him as breathing. They parted ways with a pair of weathered smiles. 

 

He was no longer hungry. He could feel the wave looming over him as he walked, ready to break upon his shoulders and drown him. Absently, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his key ring. It was bare except for a bright silver house key, a copper-colored mailbox key, and a little novelty keychain that he spun around and around on his index finger. On the end was a green plastic dinosaur, the one he’d bought for Hiyori three years ago. There were scratches all along its surface and its color had faded to a dull kelly green on one side. Looking at it made him feel nauseous, but he refused to throw it away or go anywhere without it. The charm was physical, tactile proof that the nightmare was over. 

He scowled. It had been almost three years. More than enough time, one would think, for him to get over this shit. Hiyori was back. The snakes were gone. Everything that was done to hurt him back then had been undone. Still, whenever summer rolled around he would find himself waiting for a truck to hurdle around the corner, a building to collapse on top of him. He would anticipate the appearance of a cat or a mirror image of himself, grinning smugly at him because he didn’t really think he could escape, did he? To this day, he dreamt about those years of suffering stuffed into a single moment stretched to infinity, dreamt about the heat and the cold, the screams of his friend, the sensation of falling, of fading. 

Of dying.


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

_“Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?_

_But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?”_

― C.S. Lewis, _A Grief Observed_

* * *

 

The air in her room was humming. It was physically close to her, looming. Even the air that belonged in the far corners of the room was pressed up against her face, swirling, shaking, filling and overfilling the space between her and the message on her phone. Now, she thought, would be an appropriate time to cry. 

**_|_ ** _ Yeah I checked her tags. It’s Mei. She got trapped in someone’s garage and drowned _ **_|_ **

She hovered her fingers over the keypad on her phone and tried to force an image of Mei into her mind. 

**_|_ ** _ Are you okay? I know it’s tough but this stuff happens _ **_|_ **

Hiyori gritted her teeth. Nothing. The air in her mouth was bitter and cold. She felt small, or the room felt huge. She tapped out a response.

**|** im ok mom thanks **|**

**|** _ You sure? _ **_|_ **

**_|_ ** ye **_|_ **

**_|_ ** _ You don’t have to be. _ **_|_ **

**_|_ ** i know but i am **|**

**_|_ ** _ Ok. I love you. I need to get this story in by noon tomorrow so I’ll be out late, but call me if you need anything _ **_|_ **

**_|_ ** will do. give em hell. <3 **|**

**|** _ <3 _ **_|_ **

 

She placed her phone on the nightstand and rolled onto her back. Her mom wasn’t coming home. Her dad was off doing whatever he did that made him enough money to build a Victorian mansion in the Japanese countryside. She was alone. 

That incident three years prior had done something to her brain. She was almost positive that she used to be a human being, that she used to feel joy and pain. Now she was nothing more than a machine made of meat. The wire that conducted her soul through her body had come loose, and a cotton shell had formed around her heart. The only way to crack it…

She bit her lower lip hard enough to taste blood. It was warm and sweet like gasoline, filling the gap between her lips and slithering down her chin. The air slipped back into place. The room was small again.  

A ticking sound caught her attention. Hanging on the wall opposite where she lay on the guest bed, above the vanity and illuminated by a square of blue moonlight, was a plain-looking analogue clock. It looked out of place against the ornate wallpaper and the bronze statuettes decorating the walls. What was more, it was clearly broken. The plexiglass covering the face was cracked, and the second hand wasn’t moving. It was pointing at the space between 11:59 and 12, and instead of moving on every tick, it twitched. Twitched. Twitched. Twitched. Twitched. 

Twitched.

All at once, the shell was gone. She felt her lungs being pierced, her diaphragm twitching uselessly as the air leaked out of her body. She wondered if Mei had felt something similar. A little noise escaped her, not quite a sob -- she still couldn’t cry -- but a ragged and painful breath, the closest thing to a scream she could manage. Then it was over. The ticking had stopped. The clock was gone.

She sighed, frustrated. This always happened. Despite her best effort, she kept picking these scabs and letting everything flow right back to the surface. It wasn’t sustainable. 

She had decided a while ago that the minute she turned eighteen, she would move away. Maybe to California, maybe to Hawaii, maybe to Seoul or Hong Kong or Melbourne. It didn’t matter. She just had to get off this goddamn island, get as far away as possible from these memories and create enough space to let herself heal. As it stood, the events of that trip to Sapporo still lingered in every corner, in every loud sound and look of concern. After a year of drowning in the memories, she couldn’t take it. She started burning bridges. 

There was an anger in her stomach, an ache that screamed and clawed and pushed against the walls of her heart. She was distinctly aware of the weight of her clothes, or of the air, or of dust on her skin. She got sick more often. Her sleep schedule went to shit. Eventually, she started loathing the presence of others. She watched herself lash out, push friends and family away, or just clam up completely, blanketing herself in this new cold nothing in her chest. Anything that reminded her of that summer had to go. 

Even Hibiya.

That had taken an enormous amount of strength, and when she had come home that rainy night, she cried for the first time since that summer three years ago. It had been two weeks, and the ache was still there. 

Her phone buzzed. 

_ (1) New Message _

_ From Tsubomi Kido _

**_|_ ** _ Hey Hiyori. We’re getting together this  _ _ saturday _ _. Address is still the same. Let me know if you’re coming. (-|- 0) _ **_|_ **

Another test. She looked above the vanity as if for advice. Nothing. 

Alone.

She felt like she was carving her own heart out when she pressed  _ Block Contact _ , but she had to. Even though the thought of spending the 15th alone made her nauseous, she had to stay strong if she wanted to heal. She tossed her phone onto the carpeted floor and rolled over onto her side.

Before she closed her eyes, she saw that the clock had returned, and bitterly noted the time. It was a bad joke. The goddamn thing was stuck on 8:15, just like her.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really appreciating all of the feedback I'm getting. I'm trying to update this every other Thursday so please stay tuned. Thank you all so much for your support.

* * *

_“Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.”_

― Sarah Dessen, _The Truth About Forever_

* * *

Hibiya’s father was younger than he looked. He was tall for a Japanese man and built like an oak tree, but his steel-wool hair was turning grey and his veins shone clearly through his skin, especially around his eyes and hands. His fingers were thick and crooked, having been broken or sprained hundreds of times before, and his knees clicked when he stood up or sat down. From his manner and his injuries, one would never guess that Katsuo Amamiya was only forty-seven years old, or that, until three years ago, he was still in active Judo competition. When pressed, he chalked up his weathered appearance to the stress of starting up his own dojo. Like his father before him, he said, he tended to neglect everything, including food and sleep, when there was work to be done.

Hibiya often wondered how much of his father’s obsessive and self-flagellating nature came from being the second-oldest son in a large family, how much came from his grandfather’s strict pre-war parenting style, and how much might have been the seeds of panic disorder that were sown in his father’s brain but bloomed in his own. He wondered if the gulf that had grown between them in the last three years was responsible for the grey streaks in his father’s hair or the cold, hurt silences that became the only language spoken between them. The language of loss. Hibiya didn’t blame him. His dad had lost a bright, animated child who he could protect. They’d both lost the peace that summers in Aibetsu gave them, the sunrise over Mount Teisho, the gentle caress of the wind and the murmur that filled up the Kamikawa Subprefectural Event Center as his father took the ring with another judoka and created art.

He remembered seeing Hiyori kneeling at the edge of the mat, lips drawn tight in focus, wrists crossed as she dissected the little motions that made his father’s takedowns so beautiful. This was back when she wore her hair short, in a thick black hood that stopped abruptly and unevenly at her collarbone. On her left arm was a sparkling magenta bracelet made of cheap plastic. It slipped over her wrist and rested at the point where her thumb met her palm. As he remembered, he wanted more than anything else to go back and tell his younger self to pay attention, to freeze this moment and hold onto it forever. Please, he would say, paint this in your heart, paint the arches of her eyebrows and the tightness of her face and the vitality in the little twitch of her fingertips because this is the life you had when your heart was whole.

In the first few months after he came back, his mother would try constantly to get him to tell her what happened. He never did, beyond the fact that Kenjirou was crazy and he and Hiyori had almost died. He’d probably never tell about the Kagerou Daze. Even if she believed him, telling the story would mean reliving it. And he couldn’t do that. Not again.

After about six months, both of his parents had seemingly given up on getting the whole story. Like a river against a sandstone wall, Hibiya had worn them down with his silence and created a space in his home life where he could just float, touching nothing and no one. During a normal week, he and his parents probably exhanged fewer than fifty words. That was fine. They didn’t need to be weighed down by his problems. He was fifteen. He’d ride his panic attacks out on his own, motivate himself to get out of bed in the morning, weather the loneliness and fear and the cold nothing stuck in his throat all by himself. He’d figure out a way.

And even if he didn’t, that was fine too. It just meant natural selection was taking its course.

* * *

“Hey, Dad?”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, a gross feeling of deja vu welled up in his chest.

“Yes?”

“I was…” He steeled himself. “I’m going to meet up with some friends in town on the fifteenth. It’s an anniversary thing. Is that okay?”

His father closed his eyes and weighed his desire to protect his son against his reluctance to be the suffocating parent he had been since the incident. Hibiya could see the two forces at war on his father’s face, and a big part of him hated how manipulative he felt, guilt-tripping his father and using the fear and shame both his parents felt about what had happened on the Fifteenth for his own personal gain. Still, he needed to be with the Dan this summer. That was worth any price as long as it worked.

“No. We’re not going to be in town then.”

His heart dropped like a rock. “Huh?”

“We’re leaving Wednesday to clean up after the flood and we won’t be back until Sunday evening.”

“What do we need five days for?”

“We’re helping the Asahina family first. Their house got five and a half feet of water. They lost pretty much everything.”

Asahina. Hibiya’s blood turned to ice, then to steam, then to ice again. He bit down on the edge of his tongue like a mountain climber driving a piton into the rock. He clung to the pain as the wave began to break over him again.

“Hibiya, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said automatically. The oasis he had been crawling towards all summer long was beginning to fade. He had to salvage it, somehow. “Can...can I at least go see them tomorrow? Just for a little while.”

His father bowed his head in thought once again, then nodded. “Fine. Just a few hours though. You need to be ready to work the next morning.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hibiya bowed too formally and left before he broke down completely in front of his father. If he didn’t need to see the Dan before, he absolutely did now.

* * *

 

_Mei was a jet black Bombay cat with contract killer eyes, wise, cold and emerald green. Hiyori hadn’t told Hibiya she’d be bringing her along. He was walking to the meeting spot, a bench near a set of switchbacks about three hundred and fifty meters up the Ikaushiyama trail, when he saw her standing in the middle of the the dirt path, tail curled around her paws, just watching him. Looking like she’d always been there. Hibiya hesitated, then, more out of courtesy than anything else, knelt down and reached out gingerly to pet her. She pushed her head against his hands and began to purr. He could feel the sound coming from her throat and radiating out through her skin. It was like white noise. Absently, he scratched at the base of her skull._

_He looked at her familiar shape and waited._

_He didn’t have to wait long before he felt the roar. A wave was coming. The world was becoming smaller and the air buzzed like a snake’s rattle. It occured to him that he was just organs, blood and bones, and the fear made his scalp feel like it was teeming with ants, because god, how easy it would be for it all to fail, to break, to-_

_It was too much for him, the sensation of Mei. He flinched like he’d been burned. The movement startled her, and she hissed and swiped a paw at him, claws nicking the skin on the back of his hand._

_“Mei,” Hiyori called from further up the trail. “Come.”_

_Mei gave Hibiya one last glare before slinking away to be with Hiyori. He followed._

_The trail was steep, almost as steep as the road he’d taken to get to the trailhead. Because of the way it was laid out, with all its switchbacks and grueling verticality, whenever the trees thinned out along the east side of the trail, he could see the city of Aibetsu down below. He recognized his old middle school, the terraced steps of his family’s rice farm, and the glittering lights of the new buildings being erected downtown. He had loved the dense urban district of the city. The shops and streetlights, the bustle of the train station, all of it made him feel like the world was vibrant and alive. That had changed when he went to Sapporo with Hiyori. Downtown Aibetsu seemed like a ghost town compared to the energy and noise of Sapporo. It seemed that way now, too, as the city began its quiet process of winding down for the night._

_Hiyori was exactly where she said she’d be:_ Otsukimi-chiten _. Moon-viewing Point. A little outcropping that offered an uninterrupted view of the city and the full moon that bathed the world in a bluish light.  It was a famous spot for marriage proposals among other things, but obviously that wasn’t why Hiyori had chosen it._

_She was standing with her arms hanging over the thin rail that kept people from falling to their deaths. She was wearing a striped long-sleeve shirt under a Kisaragi Momo concert tee and a pair of blue jeans neatly rolled up to her calves, a coil of twine tucked into her back pocket. She had cut her hair since the last time he saw her; the hood was back._

_He walked up next to her and leaned against the railing._ _She didn't look, just shifted her feet, traced a little circle on the ground with her toe._

_For a few minutes, they were still. Their breathing was silent. In the forest, the symphony of crickets and birds and rustling leaves blended into nothing, or everything, a high, pillowy hum that seemed to come from inside their own ears, filling the emptiness like smoke._

_"I'm glad you came," said Hiyori, in slightest whisper._

_They turned to look at one another and the world stopped._ _Her hair fell gently across her face, a curtain for her obsidian eyes, the eyes that let the pain leak into him even after all this time. She smiled her sad, weathered smile and for a moment he saw her like he used to. Wreathed in the cobalt moonlight, perfect and untouchable. For just a moment, he was okay._

_Then it was gone._


End file.
